We're Still Here Little Brother
by Elfriend
Summary: S12 Ep2 "Mama Mia": Did you think some of the emotional beats were missing from this episode? Well, I did, too.


His stomach, churning from vertigo, was the first thing he noticed when he woke, so for a split second Dean was forced to wonder, "What the hell did I drink last night?"

It wasn't a hangover, though. He'd spent the night in the bunker, awake and sober, fretting about the lack of actionable intel on Sam's whereabouts. Cas was working on what little they did know, so he should have been getting his four hours, but he wasn't.

In all honesty, it had been a few years since four hours' sleep was enough, he'd graduated to about six right around the same time he'd inherited a bedroom, and a bat cave, but four would still do in a pinch. It was certainly better than none, but damn it, he'd come home to Sam's blood on the floor, but no Sam, and a sigil that could only mean Castiel had been bounced.

All they'd been able to determine, since, was that a mysterious woman with an equally mysterious, and surprisingly badass, colleague, had shot and kidnapped his brother!

And Mary was just down the hall. His mother. His not-dead mother.

None at all. That is how much sleep he'd gotten last night.

"So, what, then?"

Dean shifted experimentally to find that he was weighted by chains."Lovely," he thought, as memory returned. He'd been zapped by the damned invisible wards, on the shabby farmhouse that Scary Poppins was apparently holed up in.

"Did I remember the paper clip? I keep thinking I need to carry a paper clip, but I never remember to…"

His thought was rather creepily interrupted by her royal bitchiness in all her haughty, and suspiciously perceptive, glory.

"They're spelled. The key is your only way out, and I'm not inclined to remove them, so I'll be hanging on to that."

Was that a hint of fear hiding in all that bravado? Yeah, definitely! She feared him, chained hand and foot as he was, and groggy from her spell, and yet she still feared him. He filed that away for a time when it could be remotely useful, which was clearly not now.

Then realization hit, and he silently cursed. Scared people are dangerous as all hell, and this dangerous bitch had held on to Sam for two days!

Several hypothetical ways to kill her dead if she'd caused Sam so much as a paper cut flashed through Dean's mind, none of which were currently viable, but it made him feel better nonetheless.

When she'd rousted him out, and shuffled him to the door to the basement stairs, she paused and called softly, "Sam."

Dean craned unsuccessfully to see, as he heard Sam mutter groggily, but emphatically, "Screw. You."

He flashed a brief smile at the back of Her Britness's tidy bun, and thought, "Atta boy, Sammy," The smile was gone before the thought was finished, though.

He knew his brother's voice better than his own. Sam was hurting, badly, is what that voice was telling him. He had endured more than a paper cut. More than a vet-treated gunshot wound to the leg. A lot more.

The woman yanked and shoved him ahead of her down the stairs, and Dean had to watch his footing, hampered as he was by the shackles, or fall face first to the basement floor. Sam was only a few feet in front of him when he was able to look up, and he felt his world rock at the sight of his brother, thank God, but paler than death, and in a dubious state of alive-ness.

Sam was as heavily chained as Dean was, secured to a chair centered in the room over a drain, (a telling and deeply disturbing feature), surrounded by a shallow puddle of water stained ruddy with blood. Sam's head hung forward, his hair damply falling like a shroud over his face. If his brother had made any effort to raise his head and meet the eyes of their ever-so-delightful hostess, it had evidently failed, if he was even still conscious.

His clothing was rent, bloody, though his leg, over the bullet wound, was heavily bandaged, as was one of his feet. He was soaked through with chill sweat - and his whole body was shuddering involuntarily, though he showed little sign of awareness.

Dean assessed his stricken brother, with an all-too experienced eye, for signs of trauma. They'd seen more than their share of that.

Hypothermia, he diagnosed, and shock - fever too, probably.

"Come on, Sammy, look at me," he silently coaxed. He wouldn't know until he'd looked him in the eye. Once he'd seen his eyes, then he'd know what they were dealing with.

"Sam," the woman repeated in a calm, quiet voice. She was used to command, this one. She expected to be obeyed. But under the icy outer layer, was that fear. A little, quivering, cornered wild thing, threatened by just the presence of both the brothers Winchester, however subdued they might be.

Dangerous. She was very, very, dangerous.

Cas was trapped outside by the warding, Sam was injured and ill, probably not in fighting condition even if they could get free, and it seemed unlikely that Mary could get in without tripping another spell. He was nearly positive he didn't want her to, even if she could. He had no idea how to factor his mother into…anything.

Dean's expression was grim and set, when Sam finally saw him. He'd slowly raised his head to confront whatever his captor might have in store for him, now, but his eyes tracked automatically to his brother's.

"Dean." Sam's voice held no inflection. "It isn't him. Dean is dead," he reminded himself, silently.

He deeply loathed Toni Bevell. She'd been in his mind again…playing in his mind, and this! This was not real. The hell-bitch had conjured up Dean - before he'd had a moment to mourn, a moment to contemplate what, if any, life he had left to him without his brother.

If he survived this, she was over. If he survived this.

He was running out of reason to think he might. There was nobody looking for him except Castiel, and who knew where he'd been banished to. Plus, Cas was hardly a detective. Maybe he'd call on Crowley for help. Maybe Crowley would even give it.

And the fact that Sam was hanging his hopes on an angel summoning the King of Hell, just about summed up his current state of mind, at least insofar as he could string coherent thoughts together.

Sam could feel himself getting weaker, and he'd blown what was likely to be his only opportunity to escape. Not that he was giving up, but it had become increasingly clear that Toni Bevell had very carefully prepared for anything, and anything certainly included Cas. Maybe Crowley, too, for all he knew.

She had definitely prepared for Sam.

She was relentless, and creative in her torment of him, and he never knew what avenue her techniques might follow from moment to moment. He could remove himself from physical pain, endure it, but he couldn't protect his mind from the drugs, and the spells, and the manipulation. She wielded her many tools against him with a deft hand, and he clung to his hate of her, in a fog of delirium.

Sam's eyes were startlingly vacant and tight with pain, his voice emotionless. Alarmed, Dean upgraded his assessment from "serious," to, "holy-shit-we're-screwed."

The Brit-bitch was drinking tea, and talking, talking, talking, and Dean kept up a patter of jokes almost automatically while he covertly studied Sam. She managed to capture his full attention with a brass knuckled, jaw-snapping, right hook, and again with the unexpected mention of Benny, but his priorities were elsewhere.

She was good at torture, he acknowledged, and he would know, but she was a fool to believe she could break either of them…wasn't she?

"Show me you're still in there, Sam, come on," he thought.

When she finally left them alone, Dean was not in particularly great shape, himself, but Sam was beginning to come around.

"Dean?"

"Hey,"

Dean had no idea where to start, "Yeah, dude, I didn't blow up, yeah, it's complicated. I'm so damned glad to see you, I didn't know what happened to you, also, what did happen to you? Who the hell is Sociopath Barbie? You look like shit. Are you even in there? You'd better damned well be in there! And I don't suppose you have any thoughts on getting us the hell out of here? Oh, and also, Mom is back from the dead" but "Hey" was all he could successfully manage. If Sam was home in there, he'd hear most of that, and the rest could wait. If he wasn't, well…

"You're not real."

Crap. "Real enough to feel like I might actually be dead. I made it, Sammy. Amara and Chuck made peace, and got rid of the bomb. I made it."

Sam wanted that to be true, which is exactly why he couldn't let himself believe it.

"It's a spell…and the drugs, she's playing in my brain, again."

Damn it, what the hell? "Look, I don't know what she did to you, but I'm real. I'm right here, Sam. Look at me, I'm real."

"Dean?"

"That's right, bro. Now, who is Angry Spice?"

Sam didn't really believe, not really, not completely, but there was no harm in answering that question, so he did. Then Toni Bevell returned and put on a show of torturing Dean, or possibly she was actually torturing Dean, either way, it was not good. His head hurt, everything hurt, and he might be lost in his mind, again, lost like after the wall came down. Maybe he'd been lost all the time since, and everything, all of it - Lucifer, the leviathan, Bobby, Purgatory, Amelia, the trials, Gadreel, Kevin, the Mark of Cain, Rowena, Charlie, Death, the Darkness, Chuck, saving the sun…maybe none of it was real.

Then Mary stormed in, "Get away from my boys!"

"Mom?" Of course not real. None of it.

Sam looked at Dean, who told him, "Yeah."

It wasn't enough.

As soon as the Brits were gone, Dean was there, squatting at his side, a steadying hand on his shoulder as he took an inventory of just how injured Sam actually was, and then he was being almost roughly pulled into a "we're-still-here-little-brother," hug. That's when Sam started to consider the possibility of believing it.

It was much later, after Castiel healed him, that Sam decided he didn't care whether it was real or not, he chose it. He decided it didn't matter. He just decided.

Dean watched Sam after Cas laid his angel mojo on him. Staying tuned in to his brother was second nature, so he knew that everything was fine, and he also knew that everything was different, somehow. Lady Toni Bevell, British Men of Letters, had broken something in Sam, and the pieces of him had shifted into something new.

It didn't seem like a bad thing, necessarily.

Sam was whole, maybe more so than ever before, but he was changed, reforged, and Dean watched and wondered what his brother would make of that in the days ahead - and what would he? Lucifer was free, the British Men of Letters were a wild card that had been thrown down on the table, their mother had been returned to them from the dead - and Sam and Dean?

Well, Sam and Dean survived, and they had each other's backs. Basically, it was another Tuesday.

Back in the bunker, they had their first family dinner, of sorts, after which Dean thought he might sleep for eight hours, (but six would do). Sam was safe. Cas was being kinda weird, and stressing about Lucifer, which was status quo, and perfectly understandable, in that order, but there was also Mary to consider, which turned out to be a three beer problem.

Ok, four hours would do…in a pinch.


End file.
